BRIGHTON WEST PIER

BRIGHTON WEST PIER

BRIGHTON WEST PIER

Last week I saw it again, staggering
like a shot beast in the high tide,
the pavilion a skull half sunk, gnawing

at its stilts. A telephone receiver swung
from the tangled guts of the bar.
Of course I have witnessed dereliction before:

mantelpieces three floors up,
the remnants of passion fluttering
in the torn wallpaper of virtual rooms,

the cross-section of intimacy.
But this reclaiming by sea of our
tentative steps leaves me

precarious: those Saturday nights
when I would catch my breath outside
its stuccoed façade, stilettoed,

tiptoeing between strips of sea foaming
below, a note from a saxophone
thrown to the wind, hearing his voice

on the line half a century ago,

still swaying there.